Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448Cushing, Frank Hamilton
History
Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 321-448
Cushing, Frank Hamilton
Zuni mythology
Of equal significance with this persistency of survival in the kiva,
as to both structural type and function, of the earliest cave-dwelling
hut-rooms through successively higher stages in the development of
cliff architecture, is the trace of its growth ever outward; for in
nearly or quite all of the largest cliff ruins, while as a rule the
kivas occur, as stated, along the fronts of the houses--that is,
farthest out toward the mouths of the caverns--some are found quite far
back in the midst of the houses. But in every instance of this kind
which I have examined these kivas farthest back within the cell cluster
proper are not only the oldest, but in other ways plainly mark the
line of the original boundary or frontage of the entire village. And
in some of the largest of these ruins this frontage line has thus been
extended; that is, the houses have grown outward around and past the
kivas first built in front of them, and then, to accommodate increased
assemblies, successively built in front of them and in greater numbers,
not once or twice, but in some cases as many as three, four, and in one
instance five times.
All this makes it plain, I think, that the cave and cliff dweller mode
of life was a phase, not an incident merely, in the development of a
people, and that this same people in general occupied these same caves
continuously or successively for generations--how long it is needless
here to ask, but long enough to work up adaptively, and hence by very
slow degrees, each one of the little natural hints they received from
the circumstances and necessities of their situation in the caves
and cliffs into structural and other contrivances, so ingenious and
suitable and so far-fetched, apparently, so long used, too, as to give
rise to permanent usages, customs, and sociologic institutions, that
it has been well-nigh impossible to trace them to such original simple
beginnings as have been pointed out in the case of a few of them.
The art remains of both the earliest cave dwellers and of the cliff
dwellers exhibit a like continuity of adaptive development; for even
where uses of implements, etc., changed with changing conditions, they
still show survivals of their original, diverse uses, thus revealing
the antecedent condition to which they were adapted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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